Google will soon run Android apps on Chromebooks

Users will soon be able to run Android apps on Chromebooks, according to tech giant Google. The company is working to bridge the gap between Chromebooks and Android mobile devices with Chromebooks soon having the ability to receive notifications and run applications from Android devices.

Sundar Pichai, senior vice president of Android, Chrome and Apps, highlighted the subject while speaking at the Google I/O conference in San Francisco this week - saying that the company was making app and data exchange seamless.

Users can look forward to having the choice of running Android applications – e.g. Evernote, Flipboard - on mobile devices or Chromebooks, said Pichai. With Chromebooks having larger screens than Android mobile devices, porting touchscreen mobile applications to Chromebooks for use with mice and keyboards was a challenge, he explained.

An on-stage demonstration revealed how the applications were transferred from a smartphone to Chromebook; other demos showed how the Chromebook was linked to Android smartphones - a Chromebook displayed notifications on incoming calls and text messages from a smartphone and an alert for the smartphone battery running low.

‘We've been working on this project for a while,’ Pichai said, adding that the company wanted this to be ‘intuitive for users’.